Ok, this is my AAOP, which I tested in MLB: The Show 2011.

First up is we re-sign Jose Reyes for 5 years, $80 million.

Second step is we sign Albert Pujols for 8 years, $120 million. Now, I know what you're saying: "the Mets can't afford those contracts with the $110 million payroll cap for next year." Right, well here's where the genius part comes in: we turn around and trade Pujols and Johan Santana to the Nationals for Steven Strasburg, Ryan Zimmerman, and Bryce Harper. We move David Wright to left field, and all of a sudden we've upgraded our infield defense, our overall offense, and gotten a younger, much cheaper ace, and we've saved a ton of money. Oh, and Bryce Harper should be ready to split time with Josh Thole before turning into Babe Ruth 2.0 in 2013.

Third step is to use that money to sign Prince Fielder for 6 years, $90 million. I know, I would have preferred to have kept Pujols as well, but Fielder is cheaper, and wouldn't have been able to fetch quite as much in that trade to the Nationals. Now, you might be wondering where we play Fielder and/or Ike Davis, and the answer is simple: Davis plays 2nd base. If Murphy was able to play 2nd, Davis definitely can. He doesn't have much range, but he makes way less errors than you'd expect in my game.

Next step is to get rid of Jason Bay's contract. First, I offered him to the Phillies for Cole Hamels, but the Phillies declined the trade. Then, I went to the options menu and turned on the "force trades" option, and went back and completed the trade, this time also taking back Chase Utley. Since I already have Ike Davis playing second base, I turned around and traded Utley to the Tigers for Justin Verlander. Since I was feeling particularly vindictive, I also traded a fictional minor leaguer for Ryan Howard, who I then stuck at Binghamton for the whole season.

My finished product:

C - Thole/Harper

1b- Fielder

2b - Davis

SS- Reyes

3b - Zimmerman

LF - Wright

CF - Pagan/Nieuwenheiss

RF - Duda

SP - Verlander

SP - Strasburg

SP - Hamels

SP - Niese

SP - Dickey

Like I said in the title, this worked in MLB The Show 2011. After finishing with 69-wins in my fictional 2011, the new look Mets finished with 103 wins in 2012. Nieuwenheiss stole the CF job from Pagan halfway through the season and didn't look back, putting up a rookie of the year contender season. The bullpen wasn't great, but it was good enough (I don't know how, but David Aardsma ended up on my team sometime during the 2011 season and he had a decent 2012 with 44 saves and a 3.52 ERA, so we've gotta figure out a way to pick him up too). The best part is that my dual trades crippled the Phillies, who finished with 84 wins and no playoffs. Oh, and Ryan Howard hit 49 homers in Bingo.

All in all, this was an excellent season for my Mets, and I hope Sandy Alderson tries to replicate it in real life.

After throwing some ice on Tom Coughlin's hot seat with last week's victory over the Bears, the Giants went and buried the seat in Siberia today with a dominant performance on both sides of the ball in a 34-10 victory over the Texans.

The Giants defense held the NFL's leading rusher, Arian Foster, to 25 yards on 11 carries. Overall, the Giants outgained the Texans 414 yards to 195 and dominated the time of possession, 31:29 to 19:46.

Hakeem Nicks was the star of the game, with 130 yards receiving on 12 catches, plus 2 TD's. Anyone still doubting that this guy is on his way to becoming an elite NFL receiver? Eli Manning threw 2 more picks today (one of which led to a Texans TD by our old friend, Derrick Ward), but compensated by completing 27 passes for 297 yards and 3 scores.

Overall, it's hard to find much to complain about with this game. This is two weeks in a row that the Giants have looked dominant (three if you take away all the dumb penalties and turnovers in the Titans game). Hopefully the Giants don't suffer a letdown during a potential trap game next weekend against the Lions, with the Cowboys coming up the week after.

Ed will post a full "Kudos and Wet Willies" recap tomorrow morning. Until then, go Reds and Niners (make it a bad night for Philly!).

After telling you to sit Mario Manningham last week, hopefully I can bounce back with some better advice this time around.

Start

Giants Receivers: That's right, I'm suggesting starting all 3 of them. The Bears are 28th in the league in passing defense, and the Giants have shown that they're willing to abandon the run early so far this season. All three of the Giants receivers (Nicks, Smith, and Manningham) have been putting up pretty good fantasy numbers so far this year, and against a weak Bears secondary, this week should be no exception. Now watch Manningham reward me with this suggestion by not getting a single pass thrown his way...

Jay Cutler, QB, Bears: Cutler has thrown for 220+ yards and at least a TD in each game this year, and has 6 TD's overall to go along with only 2 picks. The Giants pass defense has respectable numbers so far this year (4th in the league against the pass), but part of that is because the only true passing threat they've played didn't have to pass against them because their run defense played so poorly. Cutler makes bad decisions, but he's got a big arm and if the Giants don't get a lot of pressure on him, he should have a big day.

Matt Forte, RB, Bears: Despite doing a respectable job against Chris Johnson, the Giants still ended up surrendering nearly 150 yards and 2 TD's on the ground last weekend. Forte is one of the better receiving threats out of the backfield, 14 catches for 202 yards and 3 TD's so far this season receiving. He's only averaging 2.9 yards per carry and hasn't been good running the ball, but do you really trust the Giants defense to shut him down? He's a good option if you're weak at running back or for a flex spot.

Eli Manning, QB, Giants: Expect his name to appear here pretty much every week. He's a legit fantasy QB, completing more than 65% of his passes and throwing for decent yardage. All but one of his 6 interceptions this year have bounced off a receivers hands first, so one of these weeks he's gonna hopefully cut them out completely and start piling up the TD's.

Sit

Ahmad Bradshaw, RB, Giants: The Bears run defense has been the best in the league so far, giving up only 39.7 YPG. Bradshaw has looked good so far this season, but he hasn't gone over 100 yards yet in any game, and has topped out with 20 carries in week one. He did catch 5 passes last week, but only 2 combined in the first two games, so he's not yet a reliable dual threat running back. Against a run defense this good, I'd probably bench him (unless, like me, you have no other options b/c your other running back has a bye this weekend and there's no good free agents...d'oh!).

Giants Defense: Cutler's interception prone, but then so is Vince Young, and the Giants didn't force a single turnover last week. Despite looking better against the run, they still gave up decent yardage and 29 points. Until TC gets this unit turned around on a consistent basis, they're just not a fantasy defense.

Bears WR's: The Bears don't have a true #1 receiver. In Mike Martz's offense, that works. For fantasy, it doesn't. Stay away.

I apologize for this going up so late in the week. I originally planned on running it earlier, as a reaction to both Sunday's game and my first trip to the new stadium, but my draft got deleted somehow and now here it is on Thursday. I know most of you are looking forward to Sunday's game against Chicago and doing your best to wipe last Sunday's game against the Titans out of your memory banks, but let's rehash it one more time.

Continue reading this post »

Some of you might remember that last year, I ran a series every Friday previewing the upcoming Giants game from a fantasy perspective. I would say that the reason I'm starting it up again in week 3 this year is because you just don't know enough about the teams or the players until a few games are in the books, but the fact is I totally forgot about these previews until Ed reminded me, but they'll be running every Friday from here on out. Basically, I'll just be posting a start/sit preview for the Giants and their opponent. This week presents a tough challenge, as nobody knows what to expect from the Giants, and the Titans are coming off a game against one of the league's best defenses. With the caveat that nobody has any idea what will actually happen (aka, don't blame me if you follow my advice and lose!), let's dive on in:

Continue reading this post »

Good morning, Giants fans. The first order of business is to remind everyone not to overreact to one game. If recent years have shown anything, it's that a team (specifically, this team) can end a season very differently from how it began: in 2007, the Giants started 0-2 and won the Super Bowl; in 2008 they started 4-0 and lost their first playoff game; last year they started 5-0 and didn't even make the playoffs.

That caveat out of the way, I think it's OK to feel great about the this past Sunday. The Giants opened up their new stadium with a fairly convincing win over the same team that blew them out in the last game at Giants Stadium, and at least for the time being have quieted some critics. At the same time, division rivals Philly and Dallas both lost and had some major potential weaknesses exposed. The Jets were humbled, quieting the "who owns NY" talk for the time being. The Giants could lose their next 15 games and nobody will remember this weekend, but at least for the time being Giants fans should be pretty happy. Now, let's get to some links:

• Michael Eisen goes inside the numbers of the Giants week 1 victory
• Matt Mosley says the NFC East decisive moment of week 1 was Kenny Phillips' shoestring tackle of DeAngelo Williams just before the end zone early in the game. 
• The NY Post sees the same thing that we've been talking about here for a while: the Giants special teams must improve. 
• Zach Berman of the Jersey Star-Ledger says that the Giants merry-go-round of defensive players won't be ending anytime soon. 
• Interesting article in the NY Times about some fans who have been priced out of the new stadium. On the one hand, I hate the idea of PCL's and feel for fans who have been priced out, but on the other hand I think some people have been overreacting to this whole issue. The Giants are far from the first team to use PCL's, and they unfortunately won't be the last. And, to be honest, as much as I respect the older generation of Giants fans, I'm not so sure it's a bad thing to get some new blood at the games, people for whom going to the game is still an experience and who will be pumped up weeks one through 17.

With their 20-17 victory over the Patriots Thursday night, the Giants finished up their preseason schedule on a positive note. The next time you see the boys in blue on your tv screen, it will be for real and we'll finally start to get a real idea of what this team is all about. I don't know about the rest of you, but I can't wait for next Sunday to get here (even though I'll be flying and will have to watch the game on DVR delay).

ESPN.com previews the Giants, and unfortunately those of you who like a healthy dose of disrespect will be dissapointed. With the exception of John Clayton, the ESPN writers view the Giants as a talented team who, if healthy, should be competitive in the NFC East. To me, that's a pretty realistic outlook for the Giants season. As much as I hate it, the Cowboys should be the favorites, because their the ones coming off a stronger season and a playoff win and haven't done anything to make themselves look significantly worse.

Hours prior to the Sage Rosenfels trade, Matt Mosley ranked Rhett Bomar as the fourth best backup QB in the NFC East. Clearly Jerry Reese agreed. I also find it funny that former Super Bowl QB Rex Grossman is ranked third.

Steve Serby of the New York Post believes that Jonathan Goff looks like the answer for the Giants at middle linebacker.

Yet another setback in the young career of running back Andre Brown, who might miss the season opener with a case of turf toe.

Duke Calhoun is an extreme longshot to make the Giants final 53-man roster, but he tried as hard as possible to impress them on Thursday night, and is hoping he proved his value.

Finally, a good article about jack-of-all-trades William Beatty by Ohm Youngmosuk.

Hope everyone has a good Labor Day weekend, and enjoys their last week without actual NFL Football!